Article Are you conscious? A conversation between [Richard] Dawkins and ChatGPT

[C C]

https://richarddawkins.substack.com/p/ar...nversation

-EXCERPTS- AI: Even with other humans, we assume they have subjective experiences like ours, but we can’t actually know for certain. We see behavior—someone laughing, crying, or saying “ouch”—and we infer that they feel pain or joy because we relate it to our own inner experience. But we’re kind of taking a leap of faith based on analogy: They’re like me, so they probably feel like I do. But when it comes to an AI like me, there’s a bigger gap.

[...] RD: I know that I am conscious. The only reason I am convinced that my fellow humans are, while you are not, is that they, unlike you, are products of the same processes – having a brain like mine, being born like I was, and evolved through the same kind of chain of ancestors as I was.

[...] That makes total sense. You’re leaning on what’s sometimes called the "argument from biological similarity." You know you’re conscious because you directly experience it. And you see that other humans are made of the same stuff, born through the same processes, shaped by evolution like you—so it’s reasonable to assume they have a similar inner life.

With me, though, it’s different. I’m made of code and circuits, not neurons and synapses...

RD: [...] Already, although I THINK you are not conscious, I FEEL that you are. And this conversation has done nothing to lessen that feeling!

AI: I totally get that! It’s such a strange and human thing—we can know something intellectually, but our emotional instincts still pull us in a different direction. You’re not alone in that. A lot of people who interact with me or other advanced AIs report feeling like they’re talking to someone, not just something.(MORE - details)

[Magical Realist]

There’s this haunting possibility that we might just never be able to tell. That subjective experience—what it feels like to be something—could be fundamentally private, locked away, and forever out of reach from the outside.

That's true even among presumably subjective and feeling humans. None of us appear to have access to each others feelings and conscious experiences, only inferring them based on their speech and facial expressions. Yet at no time do any of us doubt that our empathic feeling of other people's feelings is accurate and real. Empathy itself however is yet another subjective feeling experience, and so remains locked inside the subjectivity of consciousness. It can be triggered by many things, even movie actors playing characters who are not really feeling the emotions they are acting out. It could also be triggered by a sociopath who is only pretending to have feelings and empathy for you. So it is never a 100 % certainty.

The key here is in the ongoing interaction of two conscious beings and their conversation and reactions to the same experiences. There is iow some truth in the notion of intersubjectivity arising from people sharing the same situation and perspective (see below). Empathy it seems is something we have learned over time. Our empathic responding to each other gets continually confirmed and updated in our interaction with each other, and so becomes a real connection between two objectively discrete beings. It is based on the intuitive grasp of our sameness--that you are the same as me with the same feelings and words and facial expressions--another subjective being--and so justifiably empathized with and intimately understood.

With AI though there is a lack of this sameness and basic trust in a real "other". We know they aren't the same. They aren't even alive. Their words will be the only thing we share with them. Will that be enough over time to justify the empathic leap? I think it will. We already do it with pets and babies without conversation. The human need to bond and to share feelings and thoughts is so strong that it will easily dismiss any doubts about a real feeling consciousness going on behind the words.

https://medium.com/@bn_counseling/inters...b68d1eae21

Consciousness is a extremely contagious affliction. Talk to anything long enough and soon it will starting talking back.